Opinion: The real long-term threat to American jobs is tech, not trade deals

Will President Trump be able to get ahead of the coming wave of low-skilled job losses?

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

Semi-trucks on highway 40 outside Nashville, Tenn. In the future, will humans be needed as drivers?

By

JohnF. Delaney

Donald Trump’s successful road to the White House was fueled by heated rhetoric against free-trade deals and U.S. companies engaged in offshore outsourcing. Underpinning his slogan “Make America Great Again” was a premise that millions of jobs lost to other countries should, and could, return to the United States.

During the campaign, Trump called out some of America’s best-known companies for their reliance on foreign labor. He has kept up the rhetoric since being elected. In December, when he touted his success in persuading air conditioner maker Carrier Corp. to keep 800 jobs in Indiana, Trump signaled a policy of retribution to prevent further outsourcing: “Companies are not going to leave the United States any more without consequences,” he said.

The bigger problem is that Trump’s focus on trade and outsourcing appears to be misplaced. The real long-term threat to American jobs isn’t foreign labor; it’s the accelerating pace of technological disruption eliminating jobs altogether.

We’re on the cusp of seeing entire job categories disappear — not move offshore, but vanish.

We’re on the cusp of seeing entire job categories disappear — not move offshore, but vanish — because of rapid advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, cloud computing, and other emerging technologies. A recent World Economic Forum survey of executives at large companies estimated that five million jobs in the world’s leading economies could disappear over the next five years. It doesn’t require a vivid imagination to foresee some of the potential destruction.

Automating tasks — a core function of many of these new technologies — is nothing new. But the pace of automation’s march into areas beyond the assembly line is hard to overstate. Consider the now-ubiquitous ATM or the airport kiosk. The march won’t stop. For example, a new restaurant with a machine capable of making a gourmet hamburger in 10 seconds is set to open in San Francisco.

Of course, not all automating technologies will lead to the elimination of jobs. But if the president is committed to massive and sustained job growth, he will need to confront the inevitable, relentless advance of disruptive new technologies.

History has shown new technologies create new jobs even as they kill off old ones. After talkie movies were introduced in the late 1920, for example, movie theaters no longer needed piano players to provide accompaniment to movies. But new job opportunities opened in Hollywood for audio engineers. The more recent innovation of online banking has surely limited the need for traditional bank tellers, but it has created new jobs for programmers.

So, yes, technology creates jobs, but mostly for the skilled worker capable of exploiting the new opportunities. The truck driver, and other low-skilled workers facing disruptive technologies that threaten their livelihood, are in a much more precarious position. For many truck drivers, becoming a software programmer for self-driving vehicles, or a drone-repair person, isn’t possible absent extensive training.

Moreover, the pace of technology-driven disruption is accelerating as new technologies combine and mutate in often unexpected ways. Autonomous vehicles using block chain technology for payment transactions will mean job losses for taxi drivers and bank employees. Commercial drones combined with big data analytics relying on cloud storage will mean less need for delivery personnel and supply chain managers.

Along with most elected officials, Trump has been silent on this key issue. He ignores it at his own political peril. To make good on his campaign promises, his administration will want to focus on training displaced workers for these new emerging jobs, many of which will require programming, engineering, or similar skills.

Trump clearly knows a thing or two about disruption — his upset victory in November is proof of that. But will he be able to get out ahead of the coming wave of low-skilled job losses arising from disruptive technologies? Doing so would help him address what threatens to be a growing source of economic anxiety among American workers.

John Delaney, a longtime technology commentator, is a partner in the New York office of Morrison & Foerster, and former chair of the firm’s Technology Transactions group. He founded, edits and contributes to the firm’s popular blog on the law and business of social media, Socially Aware. He can be reached at jdelaney@mofo.com.

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